#elxn41

I blame Stephen Harper for not getting any homework done on Friday.

I knew that the government was going to fall on Friday, and when I woke up and checked Twitter, I saw that it was about to go down. And then I watched about 4 hours of CBC coverage – watching Peter Mansbridge crack himself up about the fact that the CBC countdown clock counted down to a blank screen.

I’m not going to lie, I love elections. I love following the campaigns, watching Leaders attempt to one up one another. I like mocking attack ads. And I like that for what seems like once in a blue moon, people are paying attention to how we run our country.

In High School I helped organize a town hall meeting for our local candidates, and a mock vote for the 2004 election. I also got to vote for the first time provincially in 2005 – and I have pictures of me posing with my voter card by the polling station sign.

I sent in an absentee ballot in 2006 while I was in England for University. My fellow Political Junkies & I sat up in one of the computer labs, and watched election returns online in the middle of the night and we made colour coded Political-Party-Party-Hats, which we wore to our Politics class the next morning.

In 2008 (an election hidden amongst coverage of Obama vs McCain, south of the border) I sat in front of the TV in my house, laptop in hand, friend beside me similarly accessorized, and watched as the results were solidified before the news networks could officially release any information to the West Coast – not that we couldn’t find the information elsewhere online.

I volunteered for Elizabeth May, as she started her campaign months ago in Saanich-Gulf Islands. And I’ve campaigned for electoral reform in this province, I still have my BC-STV sign in the garage.

So while I’m dubious about the motivations for this election, I think it’s more necessary than the election of 2008. And I look forward to the #elxn41 tweets, the snarky updates from fake candidate accounts, the great political humour, and the chance that this election will be about issues, and that the Canadian people will be informed, and passionate about government in this country.

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pippa_adams@sfu.ca

Coincidental Reality

Philippa Adams is a PhD student in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. Her research focus is the way audiences in the age of social media interact with, talk about, and understand popular culture, particularly film and television.

Pippa holds a BA in Political Science from UVic and an MA in Communication from SFU. Her Master’s thesis examined the production process on the television series Battlestar Galactica.

Pippa works as the Research Manager at the GeNA Lab where she manages a range of quantitative and qualitative research projects.